


Big Damn Hero

by executrix



Category: Blakes7, Firefly
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 01:15:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tragically, the downtrodden miners find out that Olag Poculevich can't live up to his legend</p>
            </blockquote>





	Big Damn Hero

1.  
Cally glanced around the low dive with distaste. It was not the kind of place that she would frequent unless duty to the Cause required her to. Least of all on this of all days. Still, Blake had assigned her to this crucial mission, so she was glad when the belly dancer undulated toward her and slipped the tiny bit of paper into her hand.

Cally took a last swallow of the swill they dispensed at the bar and was about to leave when a posse of black-leather-clad Troopers around the piano struck up a chorus of "Serving Under Servalan." She stood up at the table, then stood on the table (it rocked and tipped beneath even her slight weight) and shouted, "Play 'Distant Star'!"

The three-piece band glanced over at the owner, a middle-aged man incongruously dressed in a tuxedo. He nodded, and Cally led most of the barflies in an emotion-choked rendition. As the last "that distant star, that shining distant star!" died away, Cally jumped down from the table and fastened her leopard-print coat around her.

"What are you, some kinda rebel?" the man leaning on the next table sneered.

"What are you—the alternative?"

"That looks like a Freedom Party coat," he said.

"Got it on sale," Cally said. "Look, are you going to get out of my way, or what?"

"Guess not," he said. Cally swung the stool she had just finished sitting on in an arc, and clocked him over the head with it.

A few minutes later, as the owner sat with his head in his hands as the furniture and fittings dissolved around him, Cally shoved her way through the riot, glad that for once she had the opportunity to celebrate Auron Acquisition Day properly.

2\.   
"Ah, Cally, good, there you are," Blake said. "Are you all right? Did you have to run from a patrol?"

{{Hitting a man with a closed fist is considered to be a sub-optimal close combat technique}} Cally sent. {{But it is occasionally hilarious.}}

"You look a bit rough," Vila said, filling a mug from the pitcher on the table. "Here, have some of this, it's awful."

"Drowns your sorrows, though," Gan said, helping himself to a refill.

"It's called Pithead Bath," Vila said. "Washes away the dust…"

(A few hours before, Gan had asked Blake if he could stay behind with the ship. He said that a regrettable earlier visit to their destination had left him persona non grata. Blake said that they were all in the same boat and Avon had said that thanks to Blake none of them was welcome anywhere and Blake got irritated enough to snap at Gan that he'd better do what he was told like the rest of them, the oppressed miners damn well needed their help.)

A handsome young man opened the door, posed at the top of the stairs, and intoned "Eta gouram na smech." The barmaid told him, "Down the street, luv, that's the one you want," and he said "Xie-xie," and left. "Wonder if they've got any Fruity Oaty Bars?" Vila asked. "Really cute, that advert."

"God, what a hideous hat," Jenna said, as a man decked out in a sort of folding mother-of-pearl lampshade sat down on a stool and struck up a tune on a ukelele. "That must be the most hideous hat ever made…"

"No matter how bad things are, they can always get worse," Avon said, staring down into the fuzzy depths of his mug.

"Gan!" the ukeleilist sang. "Olag the Gan!" The mud-miners, their tattered garments spattered and filthy, clapped, stamped their feet, and whistled.

Gan tried, with limited success, to hide under the placemat.

"Perhaps an explanation is in order?" Blake said.

"THE Gan?" Jenna said. "It sounds like a title."

"Sounds sort of like 'goniff,'" Vila said. "You're a thief? A famous thief?"

"Well, you see…" Gan started, but was drowned out by the song:

 _The Gan saw the mud-miners suffer  
He saw them writhe beneath the lash  
So he robbed from the rich as a buffer  
And scattered a flyer-load of cash._

 _He stole from the boss who steals our sweat  
Sixty thousand from out of his safe  
Then the Gan did the deed we will never forget,  
He rained it down on every waif._

"Gan…or whatever your name is…" Blake began.

"Poculevich," Gan said. "The Olag part is right, though."

"I distinctly recall that you told me you were sent to Cygnus Alpha for high treason."

"Well, you see, Blake, the Magistrate—the one whose safe I cracked--had a down on me, pulled all sorts of strings to make sure that I didn't get three to five, oh no, got sent to Cygnus Alpha for life, and had this bloody thing stuck into my head as well."

"But…weren't you sent up for killing a trooper who killed…or raped…or did something awful, anyway? To your wife?" Jenna asked.

"Haven't got one, never did," Gan said. "It was the one useful thing my brief did. Told me to spin some fairytale that would make all of you like me. 'Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot,' he said. 'Right load of mugs. They'll believe anything.'" Gan finished the contents of his pottery cup and poured himself a refill. "Best get another pitcher," Gan said. "If nothing else, they'll probably stand a round for their local hero."

"But what did you do that made them all so chipper?" Vila asked.

"Well, you see, we were escaping in a small flyer, but we were overweight and low on fuel. We threw out the seats, the deck bridging, everything we could think of just to get spaceborne. And, wouldn't you know it, the bloody box of money dropped out the hatch. Opened up on the way down, showered the whole lot down on the miners."

"'We'?" Vila said. "Who were you with, then?"

Gan glared at him. "Y'know, I think this would be just the time to test to see if my Limiter's still working. Best thing for the Cause, if it turned out that it suddenly wasn't working and I could thump anyone who annoyed me."

"Right!" Vila said. "My round, innit?"

3  
"Jenna, Avon, you stay here, in case our contact turns up. Vila, you head back to the ship. Cally, come with me, we'll try out these coordinates."

The coordinates proved to be a vacant lot. Several times, Blake and Cally saw troopers on the street, and had to hide in doorways until they passed, so knocking on doors to pass out Freedom Party flyers didn't seem like a very useful strategy.

Cally bent to pick up a bit of paper blowing around the cobblestoned street. "Blake!" she said. "Look, it's a playbill from a public execution…three days ago."

"Poor chap," Blake said with a sigh. "Well, I supposed we'd best go back and get the others."

4  
After Avon asked for the wine list, it was established that although there was no wine, there was some kind of colorless distilled spirit. It was better than the Pithead Bath, anyway. He and Jenna downed a few shots in silence, then Jenna said, "That wasn't very nice, what you wrote."

Avon raised an interrogative eyebrow, although his ear and one shoulder seemed to come along.

"'Today I was pompous and my Fearless Leader was crazy. Jenna was captured by some hairy primitives, never to be seen again. Best Day Ever.'"

"Well, eavesdroppers seldom hear any good of themselves. What were you doing reading my diary, anyway?"

"You left it on the teleport console."

5  
There didn't seem to be any great hurry, so Vila stopped at the bar for another pint of Pithead Bath. He glanced at the telescreen, where a choleric-looking man in a carmine tunic was pacing back and forth haranguing some middle-aged people seated in swiveling chairs on a stage. Above their heads was a banner: "My Grown Son Ain't Yet a Man."  
A lanky, bespectacled young man gazed at the telescreen. Vila thought he was quite pleasant-looking, although it was hard to tell what with his crimson complexion and the look of horror on his face.

"This must be the future," he moaned, "And I'm famous for fifteen minutes."

"Buy you a drink?" Vila asked. "You look like you need one, mate. And a couple more of these, and I'll think you're gorgeous."

"You're a bloke," the young man said.

"Well, yeah," Vila said. "Tell me something I **don't** know. Dunno, your name, maybe."

"Fess," he said, dazedly. "Maybe that was the problem…looking for love in all the wrong places…"

"Well, you've come to the right place, luv," Vila said, patting him on the back albeit at knee level.

6  
Blake and Cally walked into the tavern, scanning the tables.

{{Blake, could they have been captured? We've been gone for hours.}}

Then Blake looked over at one of the rough benches in the corners of the room. On one of them, Avon lay sprawled on his back, snoring. Jenna's blonde curls spilled over his tunic. His arm was slung protectively over her back.

{{Must be some sort of reflex}} Blake thought. He was a bit disappointed. He cleared his throat, and his crewmates woke up.

"Blake….I would never…" Jenna sputtered. "Not with **Avon** …"

"Where's Gan?" Blake asked.

"He went upstairs with several…admirers," Avon said. "I didn't hear any sounds indicative of distress."

7  
"Is that…well…I thought I'd feel different," Fess said, reaching over the edge of the bed for his glasses, which were folded up inside one of his shoes.

"Well, there's a few other things I could try," Vila said.

8  
Travis landed his pursuit ship and went directly to the warden's office at the penitentiary. "I got a message," Travis said. "You executed Zal Hanbrox."

"Yes!" the warden said cheerfully. "It was brilliant! Our clearance rate went up 40% because we bla….er, because he voluntarily confessed to everything. And between the gate and the pay-per-view, we cleared up our deficit."

"Didn't you get my message? The one where I said I wanted to interrogate him personally?"

"Folks in Hell want ice water," the warden said, his eyes flickering guiltily toward his overflowing In tray.

"What's that appalling racket?"

"It's the miners, blowing off some steam. Sort of a Gan Appreciation Day."

{{Yes}} Travis thought. {{Isn't this the hellhole that Poculevich came from? Cygnus Alpha would be a holiday camp compared to this. Well, if he's here, perhaps this hasn't been entirely a wasted trip.}} Travis triggered the Personal Communications module in the Lazeron ring. "What was the name of Poculevich's accomplice? And his present whereabouts?"

"Oh, I can tell you that," the warden said cheerfully. "His name's Moxton McRofferty, and he's right here in this jail."

"Good," Travis said. "Set him free. I'll take him with me."

"I can't just set prisoners free like that, there are procedures…standards…"

Travis picked his teeth with the hand with the Lazeron. "What a shame that you were shot during the prison riot."

"Oh, don't worry, there isn't a prison riot. Listen to how quiet it is."

"Exactly how did you get this job? The affirmative action program for nitwits?"

"Of course not! We believe in individual initiative here! The Commish is my father in law."

"Right the first time, I see."

9  
"Feel any different now?" Vila asked.

"It's not a cellphone commercial, it's a rite de passage," Fess said pettishly.

10  
The town square was dominated by a statue of Gan. Although it was crudely fashioned out of, well it would be mud wouldn't it, it was still a fair likeness. A necklace of fresh red flowers had been draped around the statue's neck.

Gan, a little the worse for wear, perched on the shoulders of a group of admirers. To the call of "Speech, speech!" he cleared his throat, began, "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking…well, I'm just a plain man, like you. But d'you know who's here? Roj Blake, the leader of the Freedom Party. And there's a man who can give speeches, I've heard him do it for hours at a time."

There was a chorus of boos, and a few of the spectators scooped up fistfulls of mud and looked around expectantly for somewhere to sling it. "Goddamn pervert!" someone catcalled. "Short-eyes!" "Kiddy-diddler!"

The situation was en route to getting really ugly. Then the crowd parted as an apparition forced its way through. It was a man, with straggly long white hair and a ragged beard beneath his toothless jaws. His chains had been struck loose from the prison wall, but inches of chain rattled from the fetters around his wrists and ankles. He carried a very, very large gun.

"Why'd you give that bastard a statue?" he growled.

"Because he helped us! He's the only one who helped us! The only one who cared!" said a young man who had clung to his idol's side since he found out that Gan was in the building.

"He didn't care! To save his own cowardly skin, he threw me—his partner—out of the damn flyer. Least I could kick the box of loot out the hatch before I went. Didn't do me no good, but at least **he** didn't get no good from it either." And then McRofferty raised the gun to his shoulder, squinted, and racked in a shell.

"That's not true! Or if it is, I don't care!" the young man said, and launched himself in front of Gan.

"I'm not worth dying for," Gan said, but it was too late.

It was a dispirited group that teleported back to the Liberator. Cally laid a consoling hand on Gan's shoulder and led him off to the sick bay for a stress relieving draught.

"All right, Zen, take us out of here…." Blake said, settling down on the couch.

"Blake!" Vila said urgently. "There are you-know-how-many you-know-whats coming, and the neutron blasters are under-charged!"

"Explosive diarrhea of an elephant!" said Blake, who swore when it was Appropriate.

11  
"What do you mean, you waved up to Airspace Control and told those three pursuit ships to return to base? They were here on a high-priority top-secret mission…." Magistrate Higgins spluttered.

"Well, you said that you wanted me to be a man," Fess said.

12  
"Blake, they're going!" Vila said, looking at the dots scooting across his screen.

"Is it true, Zen? Are they turning tail?"

+Confirmed.+

"Well, I'll just brew up then, shall I?" Vila asked. When he returned with the tray, he said, "Gan chucked his best friend out of a plane? No, I can't believe that," Vila said. "I mean, nobody'd do a thing like that, would they?"

+Watch this space for future developments+ Orac said.

Blake shook his head. "It hardly seems fair, does it? All these years, serving the cause of universal freedom, and what do I get? All right, a girl once named her hamster after me," Blake said, dipping an arrowroot biscuit into his tea. "But he…he drops a box of money and he gets a statue."

"Get used to it, Blake…for once, it is not about **you** ," Avon said. "It's about what they need."

"I slog my guts out to liberate entire planetary systems from under the boot heel of tyranny, and what do I get for it? A hamster."

"Well, I daresay that relatively few people were left standing after your previous endeavors, and most of the survivors think of you as a child rapist anyhow," Avon said. "…which would tend to preclude manifestations of gratitude…"

{{Small furry mammals that induce feelings of protectiveness and superiority are nice}} Cally said consolingly.

And, in low dives all over town, a new song was being sung:  
 _Olag the Gan is a helluva guy.  
He stood up to Travis and spit in his eye.  
He'll come back to us, as soon as he can.  
The hero of Danton, the Big Man Called Gan._


End file.
